Taking Things at Face Value: Typeface and its Influence on Reading, Memory, Judgment and Time Perception

Hollingsworth, Danielle
(2017)
Taking Things at Face Value: Typeface and its Influence on Reading, Memory, Judgment and Time Perception.
Undergraduate thesis,
under the direction of Matthew Reysen from
Psychology,
The University of Mississippi.

Abstract

Differing typefaces, such as serif, sans serif, or script, offer varying physical characteristics and can aid or inhibit legibility. These distinctions between typefaces lead to fonts being deemed as either perceptually fluent or disfluent. As fluency of a text is altered, the notion is offered that processing changes occur, which can influence factors of reading a text. Altering fonts have previously been shown to influence reading speeds, memory, and time estimation judgment. This thesis tests the relationship of font type with these aspects, with the addition of another judgment portion regarding perception of text quality. Determining the aspects which can be impacted by fluency differences of varying typefaces was done by presenting the participants of this experiment with an essay in one of the three typefaces mentioned. Reading speed was timed and participants gave two judgment calls. The first judgment tested perception of text quality through grading the passage and noting if any mistakes were present. The second, a time judgment, was done by estimating the time they believed to have spent reading. Memory between font types was also tested by way of a ten question quiz. Ultimately, this thesis does support processing changes due to font fluency altering reading speeds and time perception, but there was no relationship between typeface, memory and perception of text quality.